TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: NEW SPYBOT / SPRINGFIELD

Howdy, y'all, and greetings from deep inside Chicago's O'Hare
International Airport. I spoke in Urbana, Illinois, late last week
and decided to hang around Chicago for the Memorial Day weekend. Of
course, to get from Chicago back to Orange County, California, I have
to change planes in Atlanta. Because that’s the law. When you die,
whether you are headed to heaven or hell, one thing’s for certain:
you're changing planes in Atlanta.

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On with the show...

New Version of Spybot Search & Destroy
Audience: All PC users running older versions of Spybot

Several of your fellow passengers asked me to announce that a new
version of Spybot Search & Destroy is now available. Spybot Search &
Destroy is one of the two, free spyware removal tools that I *HIGHLY*
recommend for PC users. The other is LavaSoft's Ad-Aware 6. In fact,
I routinely scan my PC with Ad-Aware and then with Spybot Search &
Destroy just to be extra careful/paranoid.

Now for the bad news: If you installed Spybot Search & Destroy any
time prior to last Monday, your version is no longer supported. No
more application updates, no more host file updates, no more detection
updates. Nothing. Your version of Spybot has been abandoned in place.

How can you tell what version of Spybot you're running? Just open the
program and then go to Help > About. [You can also right-click on
your SpybotSD.exe file, choose Properties, and click on the Version
tab.] If you're running version 1.2 or earlier, you need to upgrade
to the latest version, version 1.3.

It gets worse. Rumor has it there isn't an easy way to upgrade to the
latest version of Spybot Search & Destroy short of uninstalling your
old version and then downloading and installing the new version. So,
if you have Spybot Search & Destroy and want to upgrade to version 1.3,

Once you uninstall the old version of Spybot Search & Destroy, you
need to download and install the new version. Fortunately, there are
dozens of mirror sites around the world from which you can download
Spybot Search & Destroy 1.3. Fred Langa recently recommended

and that's good enough for me. Click on a download site at the top of
the page [look for the flags]. This should automatically download
spybotSD13.exe to your computer. The file is 4.15 Mb in size, so
it'll probably take a little over 10 minutes to download over the
fastest dial-up connection. As I am fond of saying [and often
forgetting when standing in line at Disneyland], patience is a virtue.

The rest of the process is self-explanatory, but if you'd like to see
a step-by-step tutorial of how to install and use Spybot Search &
Destroy, just head on over to

A Complete Map to Springfield
Audience: Fans of the TV show The Simpsons

When I was a kid, I used to watch reruns of The Rocky and Bullwinkle
Show. My favorite part of the show--besides the fact that it
costarred a squirrel--was the hidden (and not so hidden) puns. For
example, the wrecking company in one of the episodes was named
“Edifice Wrecks,” a tribute to Sophocles’ synonymous play.

If you’ve watched the television show The Simpsons closely, you’ve
probably noticed similar wordplay in some of the episodes -- the town
of Springfield has a "Try n' Save," a "Much Ado about Muffins," and a
"New Bedlam Home for the Emotionally Interesting."

Well, our friends at Slashdot recently found both a complete map to
the television show The Simpsons and a canonical guide to all
Springfield locations. You can read the Slashdot post at either

Hidden among the serious places on the location list like "Ajax Steel
Mill" and "Art Store" are some humorous place names like the
"Bloodbath and Beyond Gunshop" [a play on Bed, Bath, and Beyond] and
the "Municipal House of Pancakes" [a play on the International House
of Pancakes.]

Even if you aren't a fan of the Simpsons, take a quick look at the
Springfield locations list. A couple of these location names are
downright inspired.

Enjoy! :)

SuperCharge Windows Without Spending A Dime

Optimize! Customize! Clean Up! The Internet is overflowing with
companies advertising software to make Windows look prettier, and
function better than it already does. But you don't need most of
those products, nor do you necessarily have to spend much money to
make your own system perform better.

This'

There are all sorts of inexpensive or zero-cost ways to improve
Windows, if you know what to do or know where to look. Each month
in PC Today you'll find several ways to improve your PC. Discover
how today -- get your free trial issue of PC Today now.